


Destiny is set in stone (but the tide washes it away)

by aconite_blue



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Metaphors, One Shot, Strong Haruno Sakura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 13:23:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20243566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aconite_blue/pseuds/aconite_blue
Summary: No matter what the universe says, Haruno Sakura will matter.





	Destiny is set in stone (but the tide washes it away)

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a weird thing that I thought of when I was sleep-deprived and on a plane, so it's probably not going to make a lot of sense.

Haruno Sakura’s first (and last) memory of her grandmother takes place on a warm, sunny day. She remembers grass and trees and an old, wooden rocking chair that she’s never seen before or after that particular memory. A cup of tea is in her hands, and she’s trying to drink it the way she’s seen her mother do, sipping delicately at the liquid, though the tea tastes too bitter and she’s having trouble swallowing it. She’s five years old and the happiest she’s been in her life.

“Sakura,” says the old woman with pink hair oh-so similar to her own, despite how age has faded it. “Let me tell you a story.”

Sakura remembers tilting her head upwards to meet sharp green eyes that are as clear as a cloudless day and hard and glittering like obsidian. “Okay!” she says, excited for a new story because her parents tell the same old ones over and over again.

The old woman smiles down at her. “Well then, Sakura, listen closely.”

Once upon a time there was a little girl with hair like the flowers on a sakura tree and eyes as green as sparkling emeralds. That little girl was like the other little girls her age; she had a mother and a father who both loved her very much, and she loved them back with all the fervor in her young heart. When the little girl was old enough, she joined the Academy to become a kunoichi, because that’s what all the other little girls her age did as well. The little girl was smart, smarter than all of the other little girls in her class, and most of the little boys, too. She could have the contents of a textbook memorized despite only having read it once. She could understand advanced chakra theory and debate it with her teachers. She could tell you the most influential political figures of the last decade and list all of their achievements—important or otherwise.

The little girl was very, very smart. But there wasn’t much else she was good for.

When the little girl graduated, she was put on a team with two little boys. One shone like the sun and the other was mysterious as the moon. They were a good team, even though no one expected them to be. The little girl privately thought that the two little boys were a better team than she was. They were the sun and the moon—next to them, she felt like the faintest, farthest star.

Haruno Sakura is fifteen when her parents die in Pein’s attack. She is fifteen when they come back. She cries, right there, burying her face in her mother’s blouse like she used to do when she was six years old and worried about her forehead. Her mother strokes her hair and rubs circles into her back, whispering soothing words. Sakura hugs her parents tight and very carefully doesn’t think about their bodies, pierced through and crushed under debris, blood staining and sinking into the ground below. 

Naruto returns to the village, triumphant and glowing, and Konoha hails him as a hero. Meanwhile, Sakura heals the shinobi that were injured in the attack, hands glowing with healing chakra and ghosting over gaping wounds. One of her patients, a kunoichi with glittering green eyes and hair that shimmers pink when the light hits it right, flashes a grin tinted with red when Sakura tells her that her injury is fatal and will kill her within the week. She bares her teeth like a challenge to the world and says, “Then let me tell you a story.”

“Why?” Sakura asks, because none of her patients have ever reacted… not well, but not badly either to a fatal injury, not even the ninja, and especially not after a miracle happened and all the dead were resurrected. Sakura can sympathize. She knows what it feels like to be too late, to be left behind while others celebrate their success.

The kunoichi’s bloody smile is more regretful than anything. “I think you’ll want to hear it.”

Once upon a time there was a girl with hair like cotton candy and eyes the color of spring grass. When the girl was younger, she was abandoned by the sun and the moon, who walked away from her and left her alone, leaving her without any light during the days and nights. And so she went to another woman, one with ghosts in her eyes and lifetimes under her skin, one who was also abandoned by her sun and moon, and from her, the girl learned to make her own light. The girl grew up with green fire flickering around her hands, breathing life back into men and women in the hopes that she could fill up the hole left in her by healing the physical ones other people had.

The last thing the girl learned from her teacher was how to punch her own holes and walk away, to inflict pain and never (never, never, never again) feel regret. When the sun came back to the village, no longer a little boy, he seemed surprised that she was no longer a distant light in the sky, that her star was now one of the brightest. The girl wasn’t surprised that the sun still shone brighter than them all.

Haruno Sakura isn’t ready for a war, but her opinions won’t change anything. Haruno Sakura doesn’t particularly want to fight in the war, but she’s the Godaime Hokage’s student and the best medic of her generation, so she has no choice. Haruno Sakura doesn’t like that the dead are stepping out of their graves and being used as puppets, but she’s long since accepted that too many things are out of her control. 

One thing that she _can_ control, though, is how many people will die in the war, so she coats her hands with green and presses them over kunai wounds, over broken bones, over punctured lungs caused by unexpected hits from the white Zetsu.

On one night when the flow of the injured is slow, almost nonexistent, Sakura sits in a tent with another medic from another one of the Hidden Villages. Sakura doesn’t ask where she’s from, and the medic returns the favor. Even though the camp is supposed to be safe, they’re in the middle of a war, and war surprises everyone. The other medic, a woman a handful of years older than Sakura, smiles at her, jade green eyes glowing in the dark of the tent and pale hair tinted pink from the light of the single lantern.

Tomorrow, Sakura will find the woman dead in the dirt, one of the first in a series of murders by an intruder in camp. However, Sakura doesn’t know that yet, and when the woman asks to tell a story, Sakura says yes. 

Once upon a time there was a young woman with hair like homespun silk and eyes like broken glass. The young woman was once a flighty little girl, but years passed and she put that behind her. She learned to be solid and grounded, a pillar of strength for others to depend on. She learned to heal and learned to kill and learned to love her friends with all her heart.

The young woman was both too old and too young when she was caught up in the middle of a war and put to work repairing bodies so that they could be sent out to the field again. She did the best she could, but the bodies that came back were always more broken than before.

One day, the young woman heard of a conflict far, far away. There were whisperings of two young men, one bright as the sun and the other dark as the moon, and she recognized them from the days when she had the sun and moon by her side. The young woman was but a star, but she went to them anyway, because although she was strong and they were strong, together they were unstoppable.

But when the young woman saw them, she found that they were not just the sun and moon, but connected together through webs of fate and a mistake made by a very old man. They were meant to be great, meant to be a legend told for years and years, meant to be immortal. She, however, wasn’t part of the deal.

Haruno Sakura is glad for peace, though unprepared for the changes it brings. Kakashi is Hokage, Naruto is basically guaranteed the position after he steps down, and Sasuke is back in the village for all that he is out wandering the continent. Sakura is still a medic, but being a medic in peacetime is a lot easier than being one during a war, and she has a lot more free time than she had before.

Sakura is wandering the village aimlessly on a night off when she bumps into a woman with an Iwa forehead protector tied around her arm. The woman recognizes her (and isn’t that a strange feeling—people recognize her as Haruno Sakura, medic-nin and kunoichi instead of Haruno Sakura, the Godaime’s student or Haruno Sakura, the girl on Team Seven) and asks to get drinks together.

Two hours later, Sakura is completely plastered and ends up trading war stories with the Iwa kunoichi. The kunoichi flips her hair, turned into a pale pink by the shifting lights of the bar, over her shoulder. She regards Sakura with glinting green eyes and says, “Here’s a story that my grandmother told me. You’ll like this one, I’m sure.”

Once upon a time there was a woman with bloodstained hair and soul-deep eyes. She was well-versed in the realm of death, but even she was surprised when war started taking the lives of everyone she loved, so she teamed up with the sun and the moon, and together they found and sealed away the goddess that was causing it. The woman remembered the sun and the moon from back when they were all young children, and they remembered her as the brightest star in the sky, and their power combined rattled the world.

After the goddess was defeated, the moon turned on the sun and they tore each other apart, each taking a piece of the other. The woman found them in a place known for endings, and there she put them together as best as she could. 

The woman returned to the village, along with the sun and the moon, wearing a smile that tasted of stardust and light. The sun and the moon were intertwined together by threads of fate, by age-old souls predestined for great things, but the woman had never had that. She forced herself into their story and dragged them away from destiny, because out of all of them, she understood how to scream at the universe that she _mattered,_ that she would not be one of the millions of forgotten stars, fading from memory over time. She was raised from a nowhere family, taught by a dying legend, thrown into a war that changed the course of the world.

The woman would not be, was not just a single, lonely star.

That night, Haruno Sakura gazes up at the galaxy of stars above her and understands.

Once upon a time there was a little girl with pink hair and green eyes who fought with the sun and moon by her side. Next to them, she always felt inconsequential.

Once upon a time there as a girl whose teammates left her. She grew stronger on her own and became one of the brightest stars in the sky, a pinprick of light.

Once upon a time there was a young woman caught in the middle of a war too big for her and a role too small. She followed the sun and moon to the ends of the earth only to find that she was never supposed to be in the story.

Once upon a time there was a woman who battled a goddess older than time. When the sun and the moon fell to each other, she was there to catch them.

Once upon a time, Haruno Sakura knew that while her teammates were the sun and the moon, she would be all the stars in the sky.


End file.
